Saturday, 20 April 2013

Daily League Sudoku #13: Consecutive Clone Sudoku

Another week, another Sudoku. This week a small twist on the Clone Sudoku genre. Normally the Clone Sudoku has the same digits in the same places for equal shapes. For this one the digits are consecutive in the same places instead. I think it makes the solve a bit trickier than normal. It definitely made the construction a bit more confusing. It took me a few tries to get a puzzles out with valid solutions, after which a few of those ended up not being unique because I had eliminated digits I shouldn't have.
I find designing Sudokus like these harder in general. I'm usually better with a more influential rule, which I can then exploit. That's why I generally prefer designing Sudokus that require no or only little givens in the grid. That's why in these types of Sudokus, I usually give it many tries, till I get a puzzle I'm happy with. I tend to be a bit picky about my puzzles and often rewrite and edit already nice puzzles, because a part of it doesn't come out the way I had planned to. So I change them to highlight it. In this one I had started with two extra cloned shapes, but then I thought it would be nicer to just have the same shapes for givens as Cloned areas. The second try ended up with one extra digit in the center. I liked it and it solved nicely. But still I really wanted that middle digit gone too, so I gave it another go. And eventually this was the result. This solves nicely and is in my opinion the nicest of the three. It shouldn't be too hard, but of course there's always the challenge of adapting to a new rule set. My Quad Second Sudoku had some people struggling to overcome not solving it as a Quad Max, so here people might get stuck looking at it as a regular Clone Sudoku. So try not to do that. Enjoy.

Lastly, if anyone is interested in contributing for the Daily League, now is the perfect time. Many of our regular authors are busy with their National Championships and other obligations. So anyone interested in jumping in and writing a Sudoku for the Daily League, give it a try.

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Introduction

I'm Bram de Laat, long time logic puzzle enthusiast. I've been solving them for over 10 years, ever since running into a magazine during my preholiday puzzle booklet run.
I've been posting puzzles on puzzlepicnic for a few years now and using this blog to share some of my other puzzles.

Contact about Puzzles

You are allowed to contact me about my puzzles when you are stuck or think there is a problem with one of my puzzles. I'd appreciate a picture included, so I can see where the problem lies. Also if you would like to hear a bit more about a certain puzzle and have a question about it, I will try to answer them.My email is bram.d.laat [at] gmail [dot] com. Please note the missing e.